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<p>The full chat log is available beginning <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02KGN5K076/p1740499203829679">here on Slack</a>.</p>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Announcements / Reminders</h2>
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<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/performance/2025/01/13/core-performance-team-rep-nominations-for-2025/">Core Performance Team Rep nominations</a> deadline ending this Friday, Feb 28.</li>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-8/">WordPress 6.8</a> Beta 1 is next Tuesday, Mar 4. Therefore any feature or enhancement tickets must be completed or punted by Monday.
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<li>There are currently still <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=accepted&#038;status=assigned&#038;status=new&#038;status=reopened&#038;status=reviewing&#038;focuses=~performance&#038;milestone=6.8&#038;groupdesc=1&#038;group=type&#038;col=id&#038;col=summary&#038;col=status&#038;col=milestone&#038;col=owner&#038;col=type&#038;col=priority&#038;col=keywords&#038;order=priority">8 performance-related enhancements</a> in the milestone for 6.8.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>WordPress Performance Trac tickets</strong></h2>
<p>Discussion of performance tickets for the upcoming 6.8 release:</p>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>westonruter</a> added two tickets to the milestone yesterday: <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/43258">#43258</a> and <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/63007">#63007</a>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/flixos90/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>flixos90</a>: <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/43258">#43258</a> seems like a pretty big change to start working on this late in the cycle. It looks like there’s no PR yet?</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>westonruter</a>: No PR yet, but it has been in Gutenberg (client-side navigation experiment) for awhile now, and in Optimization Detective as well. The patch would be small.</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/flixos90/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>flixos90</a>: Since WordPress Core has never included an output buffer (whether for good reasons or not), I think this requires more discussion that would not be possible to have in just a few days.</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>westonruter</a>: I’ll open a PR and we can discuss. If no consensus then we’ll punt.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/pbearne/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>pbearne</a> believes his tickets are ready
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/flixos90/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>flixos90</a>: Some PRs like the one on <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/62124">#62124</a> <em>may</em> be ready, but they haven’t had any reviews from committers yet. So depending on bandwidth, they may not make it</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/flixos90/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>flixos90</a>: It looks like most of the <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=accepted&#038;status=assigned&#038;status=new&#038;status=%5B%E2%80%A6%5Dcol=priority&#038;col=changetime&#038;col=keywords&#038;order=changetime">6.8 performance enhancements</a> have had some updates in the last few days, so hopefully they’re moving along. I’m going to check in on the ones without recent updates later, and can do another last-minute scrub to either commit or punt on Monday.</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/joemcgill/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>joemcgill</a> is curious about <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58001">#58001</a> and <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/57496">#57496</a>, which are both close, but the deadline for Beta 1 is coming very quickly. <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58001">#58001</a> was marked <code>early</code> and is at risk of getting punted this week without follow-up.
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<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/spacedmonkey/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>spacedmonkey</a>: I need to add unit tests right? Is there anything else needed?</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/joemcgill/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>joemcgill</a>: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/flixos90/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>flixos90</a> left feedback on the PR that is not resolved, but once you two are happy with it being committed, it seems good to go</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/flixos90/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>flixos90</a>: Beyond my feedback that hasn’t been addressed yet, the <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58001">#58001</a> PR needs a review by someone else. I explicitly mentioned that the metadata lazyloader changes that are part of it fall outside my domain too much so I wouldn’t be comfortable approving those changes. Alternatively, the PR could be split into two pieces, as I’m happy and more confident to review the <code>WP_User</code> changes</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/joemcgill/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>joemcgill</a>: Oh right. I’ll look again, but it seemed ok to me. Could be good to get <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/peterwilsoncc/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>peterwilsoncc</a>‘s feedback given he’s also looking at <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/57496">#57496</a>.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Performance Lab Plugin (and other performance plugins)</strong></h2>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/flixos90/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>flixos90</a> opened <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/performance/pull/1883" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://github.com/WordPress/performance/pull/1883</a> yesterday to use the now merged WP Core API for Speculative Loading conditionally if available</li>
</ul>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Open Floor</strong></h2>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>westonruter</a>: From doing performance audits at WordCamp Asia (and previous WordCamps), something I’ve been seeing more and more being the performance bottleneck is render-blocking stylesheets in the <code>HEAD</code>. This often shows up as a render delay when the LCP element is text, e.g. a paragraph or heading. I started investigating further and I found that Twenty Twenty-Two and Twenty Twenty-Five are not inlining their <code>style.css</code> files when they should be, so I opened this ticket with a patch to implement: <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/63007">#63007</a>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>westonruter</a>: When all stylesheets are inclined a dramatic reduction in LCP(-TTFB) results when I tested with a Slow 3G network condition: 4196.1 ms (poor) down to 2230.8 ms (good). Related to that, I found that no stylesheets in core themes are getting minified, so I opened <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/63012">#63012</a> to address that.</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>westonruter</a>: Additionally, I think we should investigate increasing the <code>styles_inline_size_limit</code> from 20,000 bytes to maybe 50,000 bytes. I intend to do some benchmarks to show the performance tradeoff of inlining versus having a cached stylesheet for repeat visits. Relatedly, the landing of Speculative Loading means additional byte size of documents with inclined CSS will now result in less of an impact due to prefetching.</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/spacedmonkey/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>spacedmonkey</a>: There is some <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/63007#comment:11">push back to minify theme css</a> right?</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/flixos90/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>flixos90</a>: I think the concern is related to block themes specifically, since end users are more in touch with them than they were with classic themes, e.g. you can export a theme etc. from making changes in the UI. So the lines between end user and developer territory blur. I’m not sure about whether that should block us from implementing minification, but all I’m saying is the implications differ between block themes and classic themes.</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>westonruter</a>: But with block themes users don’t edit any CSS file in the Site Editor, right? It’s separate from Global Styles.</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/flixos90/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>flixos90</a>: Worth highlighting <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58519#comment:2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58519#comment:2</a> too (and other comments of similar nature) that highlight that before we allow inlining default theme CSS, we should minify the files to avoid more HTML bloat. So potentially <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/63007">#63007</a> should depend on <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/63012">#63012</a>.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>westonruter</a>: I wanted to mention that the talk I gave at WordCamp Asia about Optimization Detective is available: <a href="https://weston.ruter.net/2025/02/21/boosting-performance-with-optimization-detective/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://weston.ruter.net/2025/02/21/boosting-performance-with-optimization-detective/</a></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Our next chat will be held on <a href="https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20250311T1600"><abbr class="date" title="2025-03-11T16:00:00+00:00">Tuesday, Mar 11, 2025 at 16:00 UTC</abbr></a> in the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/core-performance/">#core-performance channel</a> in <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/chat/">Slack</a></strong>.</p>
<p class="o2-appended-tags"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/core-performance/" class="tag"><span class="tag-prefix">#</span>core-performance</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/hosting/" class="tag"><span class="tag-prefix">#</span>hosting</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/performance/" class="tag"><span class="tag-prefix">#</span>performance</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/performance-chat/" class="tag"><span class="tag-prefix">#</span>performance-chat</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/summary/" class="tag"><span class="tag-prefix">#</span>summary</a></p>
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